cal proof that the Holy Spirit is
Christ in spiritual form, with his people alway, even to the end of the
world. The reality of God in Christ, manifest in nature, ruling the
world in providence, preparing the nations for judgment, sure to bring
the world to his feet, becomes an article of the missionary's faith, and
a constant subject of his teaching. The minimizing of Christ's nature
and claims has no proper place on missionary ground. The missionary
indeed is exerting an influence on the faith of the homeland equal to
that which he exerts upon the heathen abroad.

It is indeed true that here and there a man who has come out as a
missionary has been attracted and perverted by the very systems he
proposed to subdue, and has turned out a teacher of Buddhism instead of
Christianity. But such men had never the root of the matter in them, had
never felt the galling yoke of sin, had never known the joy of Christ's
salvation. They had gotten their preparation for evangelistic work from
American teachers of comparative religion, who put Buddha on the same
plane with Christ. The result has only shown the impotence of a man-made
gospel to combat heathenism, or even to save the souls of those who
preach that sort of gospel. In a sense precisely opposite to that of the
apostle Paul, they have come to be opposers of the faith they once
proposed to advocate, and destroyers instead of builders of Christian
civilization. All this is a lesson to our missionary societies and
churches at home. The colleges and seminaries which permit indefinite
and unevangelical doctrine to be taught, and which retain those who
teach it upon the ground that liberality in theology is a duty, merit
the censure of God and man; for the school or the church that ceases to
be evangelical will soon cease to be evangelistic, and when it ceases to
be evangelistic it will soon cease to exist. In this way missions are
the testing-places of Christian doctrine.

In a similar way New Testament polity is showing its power in our
foreign work. At home we are getting to be lax in our reception of
members, and are taking in numbers of persons without proper evidence of
their conversion. Baptist churches which used to examine carefully their
candidates for admission now receive them without public and oral
confession of their faith. Yet these new members may vote, and may
determine the attitude of the church in important exigencies. All this
is avoided in our mission chur